A class-action lawsuit has been initiated against Atomic Wallet by a group of cryptocurrency investors who were affected by the significant breach the wallet suffered in June, resulting in a loss of $100 million.
This lawsuit involves numerous high-net-worth investors from Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and it is being led by German lawyer Max Gutbrod and Boris Feldman, the co-founder of Destra Legal, a legal tech firm based in Moscow. Gutbrod, a former partner at Baker & McKenzie, a Moscow law firm, has mentioned that the legal team is representing around 50 clients who collectively lost $12 million due to the breach. He expressed dissatisfaction with Atomic Wallet's lack of communication about the hack and its failure to report the incident to law enforcement.
Atomic Wallet, a non-custodial cryptocurrency wallet, encountered a massive attack in June 2023 that resulted in losses of $100 million. The breach impacted more than 5,500 cryptocurrency accounts on the platform. It was initially attributed to the Lazarus Group, a North Korean cybercrime organization known for large-scale cryptocurrency thefts. However, new claims have suggested that the hack could have been orchestrated by a Ukrainian hacker group, according to Boris Feldman's allegations.
The legal firm Destra, which Feldman co-founded, has been leading the case and collaborating with Match Systems' blockchain analysis to investigate the incident further. Match Systems has been conducting independent investigations on behalf of the investors and reportedly found evidence pointing to wards the involvement of a Ukrainian hacker group in the breach.
The breach's exact causes have not been clearly defined by Atomic Wallet. The company suggested four possible reasons, including device viruses, infrastructure vulnerabilities, man-in-the-middle attacks, or malware code injection. Despite the breach, the wallet continues ed to operate Normally, with the company noting that less than 0.1% of its app users were affected by the attack.
